Dear Matt,
Thank you for submitting Homeschool Reunion to the 2015 Austin Film Festival. More than ever before, selecting the films for this year’s program has been an extremely difficult task. We enjoyed and admired more films this year than we were able to include. Regretfully, we must inform you that your film was not chosen to screen at the Festival this year.
We know how much work goes into making a film, taking it from the kernel of an idea to a fully realized visual story. We understand the sacrifices every filmmaker endures, and we sincerely thank you for sharing your art with us. Programming a film festival not only involves discovering the best films but also considering and selecting which films will be the best fit for our particular audience. Every year, the Film Department loves more films than we could ever possibly fit into our schedule.
Our screening team watched and evaluated each film at least twice, so please know your film received fair and careful consideration. Of course, judging art is inherently subjective. Your film did not fit our program this year, but that does not mean it won’t find a home at another festival. This industry demands persistence. Each film is a stepping stone to the next film; each rejection is just another challenge.
We still hope you can attend this year’s Festival, which will take place October 29-November 5. If you’re interested in participating, we’d love to have you.
The Film Department and the staff at Austin Film Festival wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and we hope you will send us your next film.
This is what a form letter looks like, kids.
Obviously, I have to take this at face value and assume all the information is true. Which, hey, I don't have any specific reason not to, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't disheartening. We haven't been accepted into any flesh-and-blood festivals yet, and that, mixed with the money spent (and really, the fact that my current job and paycheck are coming to an end in a week), have me nervous.
But Jonny said something very apropos and true: You don't land the first audition. Or the second, or often third, fourth or fifth. Or tenth. But you eventually book a job.
Now, I immediately jump to "but you might be right for certain roles and wrong for others or there might be somebody a different body type or brown eyes and that's the reason you wouldn't book an acting gig. A film is exactly the same thing every place you send it, so it can't try out for multiple roles to be right for them." But that's not true.
Every festival is going to have different specifications, different themes, different levels of bureaucracy, different mandates, et cetera, so your movie is actually a blonde-haired, blue-eyed thirty-something guy trying out for places that might only want or need a green-eyed 18-year-old Indian girl.
(It's worth noting here that even if I'm the only one who reads this blog, just writing it really helps me come to grips with the fears, frustrations, and other alliterations that come over me either alone at night or mid-day when I get one of these letters that "confirm" that all my friends are simply being "nice" about the movie.)
The first time I was in Texas, it was in Austin. That's one of the things about applying to these festivals that was exciting: in the same way that I wanted to attend Carnegie Mellon because I had spent a "Sleeping Bag Weekend" there to audition and see what the college experience was like, I want to get into the Austin Film Festival and Sundance because I've been to Austin for South By Southwest and I went to Sundance last year because... I.. wanted... to. Since I have the great memories of those places, I can easily imagine myself in those places again and the emotional memory that comes with it, as opposed to, say, BendFilm in Oregon which could, for all I know, be a tick-infested woodsy affair that I might dislike.
Austin was great. It was a really funky, artsy scene, there were live bands playing everywhere (I went for the music, not the film fest), I saw Stone Temple Pilots, a sadly-as-yet-undiscovered-by-me Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as well as Street Sweeper Social Club and a bunch of small bands whose albums I picked up whilst there. The town was small and cozy, and it was a blast! (It didn't hurt that I was there with a girl I was crazy about.) I would LOVE to go back and experience the film festival there, especially with my film in it!
The SECOND time I was in Texas, incidentally, was last January, when I went to the small town of Tyler to see a theatre company (APEX 20) perform my stage mystery "Nevermore." It was a thrill I'll never forget - having people I'd never met performing words I had written years before in multitudinous Starbucks around Los Angeles. Another fantastic trip.
So it would have been nice to have the reason to go back a THIRD time be that I had directed a film that was playing there. Kinda like stepping stones: Enjoy the place, have my writing performed there, have a film I directed play there. Then, of course, I would have to buy a house, I guess is the next step.... (Never gonna happen, by the way.)
But, hey: as much as the "Sleeping Bag Weekend" made Carnegie Mellon my number one school choice, and when I wasn't accepted there, I was crushed, I WAS accepted into NYU. And that place was perfect for me. Better than Carnegie Mellon? I actually think so. I don't have much to compare the two, but going to New York for theatre training was hugely important for me as an artist and person in a way that going to school in Pittsburgh could never be. And while film festivals are different than schools, in that you can be accepted to more than one of them, perhaps the festivals we DO get accepted into are far more "right" for us and we're saving money and time by skipping what wouldn't have been the right venue.
(That's what you'd call a "glass half full" post.")
All that being said,.....
"To tell you the truth, I haven't even thought about it, not for a second have I dwelled on the fact that the show's over! I don't, uh, I don't, uh, think about it, I try NOT to think about it and therefore I, you know, DON'T, because that's a very healthy way to deal with something that is very -- ultimately, not that important in the long run. Its not, not, uh, not important at all, you know, for me."
-Allan Pearl, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN
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